The El Tovar Apartments is an apartment building located at 320 East Grand Boulevard in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, in the

East Grand Boulevard Historic District The East Grand Boulevard Historic District is a historic district located along East Grand Boulevard between East Jefferson Avenue and Mack Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 19 ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1991.

Architecture

Often attributed to the firm of Wiedmaier & Gay, the December 6, 1928, edition of the Detroit Free Press lists Robert J. West as the architect of the building. The El Tovar Apartment building is an excellent example of Spanish Moorish/

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style. The El Tovar Apartments is a 4-and-a-half-story building, containing 73 apartments, constructed from orange brick with limestone trim, orange

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

accents, and a Spanish tile roof.El Tovar Apartments
from the city of Detroit The entrance is within the center pavilion, reached by a sidewalk flanked by carved lion figures.
from the state of Michigan The name El Tovar is carved on a scroll above the entrance. Minaret-like towers project from the gabled roof, and there are arched openings at the corners of the front façade, chimney stack-like projections, pseudo-flying buttresses, and stylized crenellations.

Significance

Built in 1928, the apartment building represents a significant change in Detroit from low density to higher density housing. In 1988, the Messiah Housing Corporation purchased the building; they rehabilitated the apartments and opened them for Section 8 housing in 1992. Messiah Housing also owns the nearby Saint Paul Manor Apartments and

Kingston Arms Apartments The Kingston Arms Apartments is an apartment building located at 296 Grand Boulevard (Detroit), East Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan, in the East Grand Boulevard Historic District. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in ...

References

External links

Church of the Messiah Housing Corporation
{{National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Apartment buildings in Detroit National Register of Historic Places in Detroit Residential buildings completed in 1928 Residential buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Historic district contributing properties in Michigan Art Deco architecture in Michigan